


& in this world of/ yes

by whilst



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: Cameos, F/M, Future Fic, secondary Kate Murry/Alex Murry, secondary Meg Murry/Calvin O'Keefe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilst/pseuds/whilst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: archaic understanding isn't legally binding.</p><p>Vicky works her way through the graduate program at Columbia's School of Journalism. Adam mooches off her housing for a semester and change while he writes up his dissertation and... gets into trouble on the side. To be alive is to be vulnerable (to the odd abduction scenario).</p>
            </blockquote>





	& in this world of/ yes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fic_nonnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fic_nonnie/gifts).



> This work references events in _A Ring of Endless Light_ as well as _Troubling a Star_ , _The Arm of the Starfish_ , and _A Wrinkle in Time_.

"... Adam?"

Vicky woke shivering on the couch in the non-dark of her apartment. There was no movement, no sound save the steady hum of the fridge, the aquarium, and irregular screech and bang of Manhattan traffic, even at 2 a.m. There was no reply. No one else was home. 

Joints protesting, she rolled herself off the couch and to her feet, toes curling at the cold of their dusty wooden paneling. The orange glare of streetlamps through blinds lit her path to the bedroom. Real bed now, not the couch, no more studying for the night. The radiator must have turned off – that must have been what woke her – because the air was freezing, her limbs were freezing, their bed was freezing, and she curled up miserable under the covers, feeling very much alone. 

When she and Adam had made plans for him to stay with her through the next half-year while he completed his dissertation, she had hoped it would be a chance for them to grow closer to one another. John had once said relationships weren't real unless they wound up in bed. At fifteen it had all seemed so simple (no, it really hadn't). She's older now than he was then, no matter the age of his soul. She and Adam were serious about one another, serious enough to be sharing more than a bed. Serious enough to be meshing their professional lives, their futures. 

Except now here they were, sharing an apartment and working towards their separate degrees, and she hadn't seen Adam in nearly a week. Kidnapped, however officially, by the side of his research that never got published or spoken of aloud except in the vaguest of terms.

It could be two or three days at a time, sometimes more, but often without much advanced notice. He'd missed more than one date night. The date would have been ramen and household chores, but he had still missed them. She had had to make excuses for them to his parents when they wanted to take them out to dinner.

Ten days, so far. 

At first he had called, texted, emailed at odd and irregular intervals. Then nothing. His superiors made his excuses, the same ones she had given Doctor and Professor Eddington last Friday. The ones that meant they either didn't know or wouldn't share.

  
("I'm his girlfriend," she had said, although the velvet box she had found in the back of their spices cupboard said she was more. The spreadsheets and scratched out budget calculations said she was more.

"Please just tell me," she had said.

"We're sorry," they had said, and not much more.)

  
Beneath the comforters she had picked out alone, she turned, and turned again, but sleep would not come. Giving up, she pulled out her mobile, read the clock, and counted back. A little past one, MST. It didn't matter; he worked nights. She tapped John's name. 

"Vicks? You're up late, for you. Something up?" 

"Can't sleep. Talk to me. Are you free? How's Arizona?"

"You know me, I'll be going at for a more hours than this." The smile in her brother's voice warmed her like the heating system was failing to. He had always been good at taking her out of her head. "Arizona's hot. Dry. Gorgeous. Or at least the equipment they have here is. The facilities are incredible, but my reproducibility's still shaky. Still worth every minute of the move. What to keep me company while I walk through this set up?"

John's layman's astrophysics eventually carried Vicky to sleep. 

 

 

She was only twenty minutes into her the History of Communications exam when the echo hit, muted pain and relief and needing in the unmistakable harmonics that read as Adam. The rest of the period flew past as Vicky scrambled to finish, turning in her essays with more than half the time to spare. There was still no message on her phone, no missed calls, when she ran unerringly uptown. It didn't matter. She knew where to go.

In spite of all her rushing, she still missed the shuttle by seconds, panting impotently as it pulled away, lumbering and screeching to the Medical Center without her. Frustration stung in her eyes, Adam's call like a word on the tip of her tongue, as she gathered herself to call a taxi, to catch a subway, to begin _walking_.

"Hey!"

To not burst into tears on the sidewalk. It was midterm season. It would hardly be the first time.

"Hey!" There was a hand on her shoulder. "Viv- no, Vicky, right?" A woman, tall and blonde and gorgeous peered down at her with soft concern. " I'm Carolyn. I was at the reading last week when you went up. I've read your stuff in the Bronx Beat. Are you okay?"

"Fine, I'm- I'm fine." Vicky blinked at Carolyn, first down in surprise at her hand which was a subtle resin prosthetic, and then quickly up at her eyes, embarrassed for looking. "I think I remember seeing you."

Carolyn didn't seem at all embarrassed, poised as Suzy at her most _Suzy_. Glamorous, even. "Is it midterms?"

"No, I just... I really needed to catch that shuttle." Vicky flushed red in shame, stumbling to explain, but she was already being pushed, gently guided into the passenger side of a car. "No, wait, I can just-" Carolyn slammed her door and swung around to the driver's side. 

"Don't worry about it," she quipped, firing the ignition and glittering in the city sun. "Medical Center, right? I was headed uptown anyway."

 

 

Carolyn dropped her off near the public entrance and Vicky made her way inside. Getting past the front desk was only half the problem. She had to make her way past double and triple checks for identification as well as, oh, say, a hundred odd forms or so before the red tape would gave way. By the time she was escorted to Adam's wing she was exhausted, nearly bumping into a young man as she exited the elevator. 

She met his eyes briefly, and although he was blond, for a moment she saw dark hair and blue eyes, heard the sweet pitch of an oboe and the enthralling depths of whale-song. Whether it was the recently loneliness, the cold, the weight of Adam in the hospital, she was reminded of Esteban. Recognition passed and the elevator doors clicked shut.

"Vicky!" The memory dissolved like sugar in syrup by the time she'd reached Adam's bedside. He was conscious and alert, face lighting up at the sight of her. "That was fast. I only just messaged you."

"I got your other message. I'm here." There were bandages around his head. There were probably more elsewhere, but they were the ones she noticed first. She smoothed her hand gently over them and kissed him, fierce with relief. 

"They're just keeping me another two days or so for observation."

Vicky nodded "Just so you know, John might kill you now that you're back." He nodded. "We also missed dinner with your parents. And my sister."

Adam groaned and it was so good to laugh again.

 

 

There was a missed call on her phone when Vicky got back to her cold and empty apartment. Calvin O'Keefe. It was strange. Their apartment didn't have a landline, not with both of them with personal cells, so it was unusual enough to hear from Adam's other advisor. Maybe after two weeks of dead air, Vicky thought sourly, and mashed her thumb at redial. The un-giving smoothness of the touchscreen somehow made it less satisfying.

There was a lab notebook beside the aquarium, and she flipped it open while she waited, paging through idly. _It'll be Mrs. O'Keefe_ , Vicky thought, just as Meg's voice filtered down the line. "Vicky, I heard from Charles. Is everything all right?"

"Adam's fine. They want to keep him a few days because of the concussion but there's nothing to worry about." _Please and amen_. 

"That's good to hear. But I'm calling about you. How are you holding up, sweetie?"

The last page had a neat table sketched out in pen, three-quarters full of measurements and detailed observations. In the bottom corner, there was a drawing of two frilly-gilled salamanders.

"I'm fine. I didn't even know anything was wrong until today."

"Now I'm having some trouble believing that." 

The salamander on the left was smoking and wearing an unlikely pair of sunglasses. The one on the right was sweating bullets. The caption on the bottom read: 'You axolotl questions, buddy.' Carefully and one-handedly, Vicky colored them both in, highlighter-pink. 

"You're right," she admitted, because she could sometimes sense the truth of things now and that made lying more trouble than it was worth. Meg, she remembered, had always been good at reading storms. Not dolphins, maybe, but storms. 

"Tell me," she said now, so Vicky did. Two week's worth of worry. A semester's worth. _A lifetime, past to future_. Vicky leaned against the wall beside the aquarium, prying off the lid one-handed and sinking it into the water as she listened and spoke. She wiggled her fingers gently until one curious axolotl climbed into the palm of her hand. Ariel, probably. Caliban was shy and tended to hide in their artificial cave. Ariel nibbling toothlessly at her fingertips when she scooped him up near the surface of the water, holding him near enough to watched the gentle undulation of his gills while he sat, cold and clammy, calm in her hand. 

"Not many people remember this, but-," Meg said, then stopped. She started again. "My father was a brilliant scientist, back in his day. A physicist. When I was a child, he went missing without a trace. The government said he was away on a top secret mission – wild, right? And not wholly untrue – but they'd lost track of him. For years. And my mother, she would write to him every night without ever getting a reply and I used to wonder... I promised myself..." 

She trailed off, and Vicky waited. "I can imagine," she said at last. It may not have been true, but after the past two weeks, it felt that way.

"So could I," Meg said, wry and recovered. "And yet here I am, with Calvin, with our family, with seven odd children winking in and out of the universe."

 _The stochastic model,_ Vicky remembered her saying once, _hasn't been invented that can keep track of all the Murry-O'Keefes on this plane of existence._

Not a math witch herself, she had had to look it up, but the image had stayed with her. Her family, her friends, everyone she ever knew like pinpricks of light on a globe winking in and out like fireflies. Beyond her knowing or her protection. "How did you do it?" she asked, voice rough to her own ears. "How did you keep going, knowing?" That nowhere was safe. That nothing was sure. That like Meg or her mother, someday she could be writing letter after letter to someone who might never return to her.

"Oh Vicky," Meg sighed warmly. "You already know. I chose. Again and again, I chose, just like you do and just like you will."

Vicky's laugh was as rough as her voice. "To take risks?"

"To have faith."

Ariel, at last, climbed over the rim of Vicky's hand and fell the few inches to the graveled bottom. Vicky pet sleepy Caliban once and withdrew her hand, flicking droplets from her fingertips.

"Anyway, you can always call me, my darling. You and Adam are dear friends of our family, and you know, friendship is what makes the world spin round." 

"I've heard that before."

The tank lid slid into place without a snap and Meg added, so quietly Vicky nearly missed it, "We are, none of us, alone." '

 

 

"Geez, it's freezing in here."

"I know. They turn the heat off too early in the spring." 

The first thing Vicky did upon entering their apartment and toeing off her boots was to shove her coat into Adam's arms to hang and wander into the kitchen. She filled their electric kettle with tap water and set it hissing. 

"Are we sure this qualifies as spring?" Adam called from the living room.

"That's what it says on my transcript."

"Yah. Mine too." 

Adam was sprawled across the couch when Vicky emerged with two mugs which she left on the table in front of his feet. She went back into the kitchen. "Hey, Vicky."

Vicky kept her head ducked in their spice cabinet. "Green or black?"

"Green. Among other things, I'm hideously behind in my writing by now, I could use the caffeine boost. Hey, Vicky," Adam repeated. "You're angry with me. Talk to me."

Vicky closed the cabinet door shut with more force than she meant, two packets of green tea pinched between her fingers. "Not angry. Just. Frustrated." She didn't turn around. 

"I'm sorry I worried you."

"You know, when I chose the Journalism program, I thought I was going to be the Lois Lane of this relationship."

"Clark Kent was a reporter too," he said.

"If I was Clark Kent, I would have found you days before you managed to get abducted. You didn't message me for a week." Adam opened his mouth to speak, and Vicky winced. "No. No, I'm sorry. I know you have that whole secret agent slash damsel thing on the side. I'm just glad you're okay."

"I'm hardly anything like--"

"Gaea," she said. "Antarctica. Singapore."

Adam opened his mouth. He closed it again. 

"I knew it would be like this when we started. I know what I signed on for."

Hollow. "Did you really?"

"There. That. _That_ is why I'm frustrated." She stomped back to the couch, tossed both teabags carelessly in their mugs, and crawled angrily into the negative space of Adam's body, dragging a worn afghan after her. He let her tuck them both in, patient oh so sincere in his confusion. "For someone whose thesis was on communication, you've sure gone out of your way to be confounding. I know a lot of your work is confidential, but you need to try harder to let me know what's going on so it isn't _weeks_ before I know whether you're just caught up in amphibians or, or, abducted! More importantly--" Okay, so maybe a little angry. She grabbed her mug and pressed her lips fiercely to its rim. 

Adam eyed her warily. "What?" he prompted, making no moves towards his own.

"I don't think that's really the problem." With an air of guilt, she produced the velvet box. Adam stilled, at her back. "I found the spreadsheets too. But you know, I didn't need any of those to know what you were planning."

"You didn't?" He sounded both winded and faraway.

" I think we're both very clear about how we feel for one another, by now. How many times have we cycled through these doubts. But I also think you keep expecting me to walk away. No." She turned on the couch to face him more fully."I think you think I _should_ walk away, and you've been trying to make me do it. That needs to stop."

"Vicky, I'm so—"

"Your concerns aren't... I mean, it's because of the kinds of dangers your work involves."

"Well, yes." 

"And because circumstances haven't been perfect. Because you're brilliant – I know you're brilliant – and you can probably think up a dozen reasons to second-guess yourself."

"Yes." 

"Because we make each other vulnerable and you're _scared_."

" _Yes_ , Vicky. All of that. "

"I need you to hear me." She jabbed him in the chest. "Pay attention, Eddington. I'm choosing you, and you may as well work with me because you sure can't stop me. No two-body problems or lousy letter writing is going to stop me. I'm choosing Lois Lane and James Bond and penguins without-- without safety nets, or back-up plans, or... something...." 

"Sounds like you're working towards another poem," said Adam, and she might have screamed if his expression wasn't heartbreaking, hopeful and terrified. If his hands weren't pinning her hand so gently against him, like it might startle and flutter away. If he wasn't just as breathless, leaning into her like a cowslip turning toward the sky. 

"Maybe I am," she said instead. She cupped his face in her hands, drank in his light. "It's a work in progress. And so is this: Adam Eddington the third, will you marry me? I don't have another ring and nothing- nothing is any safer, but. Will you marry me?"

What he didn't say in words, she heard all the same.

 

 

_Epilogue_

 

"Oh no."

Vicky looked up from transcribing her notes to where Adam stood, stooping and cleaning out Caliban and Ariel's water filter. He waved a damp hand irritated towards the clock and the calendar hanging over their desk. 

"I lost track of time. I'm missing Rosa's lecture on rainbow mantis shrimp."

"On what?" The calendar was a recent addition, already populated by an uneven mix of Adam's neat print and Vicky's practiced italics. Vicky squinted, but couldn't make out the details.

"Rainbow mantis shrimp," he repeated. "They don't have much to do with what I'm studying – absolutely nothing, in fact – but they're fascinating. Their vision includes the most color cones in the known animal kingdom."

"Sounds impressive. What does it mean?" Their single desk was a maelstrom of notebooks, scrap paper, post-it notes, and rough drafts of Adam's dissertation. Vicky had long since retreated to the coffee table and couch, into which she burrowed more deeply now. "And are you going to try and make this lecture?"

"Nah, it'll take half an hour to get there through this ice."

"Isn't April supposed to be all about showers?"

"Yah. At this rate, we'll be lucky it doesn't snow through May." Adam popped the new filter back into place.

"They can see more colors than we can even imagine in a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. UV waves, microwaves, infrared maybe ... they can see all of that and then some. Rosa says there's a good chance they use colors we can't even see in order to communicate with one another. A secret color language." 

Vicky hummed into their afghan trying to picture it, and Adam chuckled. 

"What is it?"

"No. It's nothing."

"Mister Eddington," she said, mock severe.

"Missus Eddington," he replied in kind, and Vicky watched in contented amusement as his ears turning slowly red. "It's just that... for a moment I could hear you running with this. Wondering whether angels or unicorns or something could register in another spectrum."

"I wasn't wondering that." 

"No?"

"No, that's all you, resident scientist." Vicky set her blankets aside, eyelids dropping. "And yes," she admitted, "That's certainly something... I _would_ wonder. Reading messages on invisible waves... swimming through meanings that we see but can't _see_ – no wonder you wanted to make this lecture. It's right out there with your dolphins."

" _Our_ dolphins." Adam sat and Vicky tugged him reflexively into her orbit, no doubt crumpling a reading or three. He leaned into her warmth and she ran her fingers through his hair.

"So what do you think?" she asked. "Electromagnetic angels? More intuitive leaps?"

"I hope not. The tempest twins live pretty close to our wifi. It's probably unethical to leave genetically modified salamander clones sunbathing near the Internet router if amphibians exhibit archaic understanding."

"Some good rhythm, there," she said, and he kissed her. Simple and sure and sweet. She grinned into it.

"And what about you?" he asked. "Picked up anything interesting with your receiver talents?"

"Yes," Vicky said, and there was light. And faith. "And still yes."

**Author's Note:**

> At one point Vicky's thoughts reference Sara Teasdale's "Young Love", of which my favourite part is: " _I am like a cowslip turning/ Toward the sky,/ Where a planet's golden burning/ Breaks the cowslip's heart with yearning_." And of course the title is from E. E. Cummings' "Love is a place".


End file.
